


Where Little Cecils Come From

by Malteaser



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Characters of color, Genealogy, Multi, Origin Story, PTSD, Romance, Small Town Eldritch Hijinks, WWII era, and lo there were the 50s and they were really friggin' strange, and then there was the 60s and they were even friggin' stranger, does anyone even remember the 70s?, does anyone want to remember the 80s?, spoilers through ep033
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/Malteaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil is a second-generation Night Vale resident. He was born in Night Vale. His parents were born in Night Vale. His grandparents, however, came from other places. And then meet each other! And then like each other! And then conceive his parents! And then they had to meet each other and repeat the process, after surviving the terrors of childhood that crushed so many others.</p>
<p>That Cecil exists is a miracle of infinitesimal likelihood. As are you, reader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Little Cecils Come From

_HERE LIES Undersheriff Oswald Palmer, born in Window Rock, Navajo Nation. November 17 th, 1920- February 1st, 1994. Beloved Father, Husband, and [INFORMATION REDACTED]_

He came home from the war with an honorable discharge and a stern warning not to talk to anyone about what he did as a Marine. He didn’t need the warning. He didn’t have the words to speak of what happened.

It seemed like very little had changed since he was last at home: his mother was greyer now, and tired more easily; some of the boys he’d grown up with had died. It should matter more than it did; it should provoke feelings that he couldn’t make himself feel. The only thing he felt was the vague yet menacing non-feeling of living among strangers in a foreign land.

Eventually, he noticed another change- people began moving off the reservation to look for work in cities in California and Texas. It planted an equally vague yet menacing idea that if he actually moved away from home to live among people he didn’t know in a place he didn’t know, the vague yet menacing feeling would abate.

He listened more closely after that, trying to figure out in what direction he could go. He heard about all kinds of destinations, most often Los Angeles and El Paso. Night Vale was a name he’d heard only once, but he didn’t need to hear it more than once. It repeated itself to him, over and over again, until it became a mantra: don’t give up, Night Vale is waiting for you.

It was months before he came across a bus that would stop there. He found he had just enough cash on him to cover the fare, and boarded without saying goodbye.

_HERE LIES Quasheba Palmer nee Malcom, born in Savanna-La-Mer, Jamaica. August 26 th 1921- March 76th 1992\. Beloved Mother and Wife. Night Vale’s First Professional Meteorologist._

She is going to be a singer one of these days, and an important one. She known that since before she quite knew what singing was, when singing was as much a part of living as the patter of rain of tin roofs and the beating of the sun against the waves. When she did learning about singing as something people did, something people were paid to do, then she got more specific in her goals. She was going to be bigger than Josephine Baker; she was going to have men falling over each other to buy her expensive things, and she would sing in the finest theatres and concert halls in Europe and America.

First, though she needs to get noticed. Until she gets noticed, she’s going to have to keep singing in bars and the occasional ramshackle night club, where the men fell over themselves because they were drunks and the name Josephine Baker was never mentioned. That was okay though- that would make for interesting stories to tell when she was famous.

She isn’t the only one looking to get noticed either, but that’s okay to- it means that every so often people from those fine places in America and Europe come looking to notice people, especially now that so many people were busy in the army. One of these days that will be her: she knows it like Granny Cordelia’s old bones knew when a storm was blowing in.

When the day finally comes that she is told that she made to cut, she isn’t too surprised. Night Vale isn’t a name she’d heard of before, but she knows it’s the start of the rest of her life.

_HERE LIES Charles Chiune Korematsu born in Vacaville, California. December 4 th, 1918- October -3rd, 1987. Beloved Father, Darling Husband, and Almighty Janitor._

He was studying at the University of Louisiana when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Everyone gathered around the radio to listen. They stared at it for hours, as the country seemed the spiral out of control around them, the unbelievable and unthinkable broadcast live as it happened.

Then they stared at him. They stared at him for days; he could feel their eyes pressing in on him, but every time he tried to look back they turned away.

He was told not to bother returning for the Spring Semester. He was fired from his job. His father told him to come home, and then after Executive Order 9066 came through to stay away.

He hadn’t really intended to listen to him either time. But it seemed like everything was conspiring to keep him away from California. He missed his train. The first two taxi drivers refused to take him to the bus depot. The buses were all late and mixed up and he got on one to Phoenix instead of Sacramento. Then that bus broke down in a little town somewhere in the middle of the desert, and he went out to try to find a restroom only to return, still needing to pee, and find that the bus had left two weeks ago.

He spent an extremely panicked day trying to figure out how to leave the town, before deciding that maybe if he just turned himself over to whatever kind of law enforcement agency was around they would turn him over to the WCCA. Instead, one of the city officials greeted him by name and showed him where his office was- a dark closet of a room full of cleaning supplies and Tommy-guns.

It took him three weeks to learn that his new home was called Night Vale.

_HERE LIES Dr. Rebecca  Korematsu nee Gershwin, born Rebecca Gershovitz in Krakow, Poland. May 17 th, 1919- Street Cleaning Day #829. Beloved Mother and Wife; Feared Professor of Canaanite Languages, Ein Sof, and Forbidden Angelic Knowledge._

She had been hiding in Marseilles when she applied for the position. Hiding, not in the sense of living behind someone’s coal bin- she was able to avoid that, as France had not fallen yet- but in the sense of lying about who she was and why she was there. She was looking for her husband, she told her neighbors.  He was a Frenchman, and she was sure he’d survived and would come looking for her soon.

It was a lie of course. There was no husband, and she had no one looking her specifically.

Yet. That would change if France did not defend itself with more competency than it had defended Poland.

She told different lies to the places she asked for help from. She wrote to people in New York claiming to be a relative; she wrote to Zionist organizations claiming to be a believer in their cause, she wrote to Britain offering her services as a spy and to a half dozen different agencies claiming skills she did not possess- but if only someone would give her a chance, she would learn them.

She cried when the letter informing her that she’d been hired arrived. It came via airmail, with all the paperwork she could have ever asked for- a good enough visa to grant her entry to the United States, a good enough salary to live a comfortable life.

All she needed to do was brush up on her Hebrew, and she was all set for Night Vale.


End file.
